He got here aboard in 2015 to stabilize a troubled Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, led the museum after one director was ousted after which shared energy with one other. However on Tuesday, Daniel H. Weiss advised the museum’s board that he would step down as president and chief government in June 2023.
“The establishment is in a robust and constructive place — I’m happy with the work that we’ve carried out,” Weiss, 65, mentioned in an interview. “I believe it’s at all times greatest to know what the correct second is. I’m able to do one thing else.”
Weiss, the previous president of Haverford Faculty and an artwork historian, mentioned he was not sure what his subsequent chapter could be, although he seems to be ahead to returning to extra writing and maybe some educating. The board will now consider whether or not to exchange Weiss or to desert its two-pronged management construction, which is uncommon for artwork museums and was put in place in 2017.
The mannequin appeared to serve the Met properly, with Weiss, as president, serving because the enterprise and administrative chief, whereas its administrators — Thomas P. Campbell, who resigned beneath strain in 2017, and Max Hollein, who was appointed in 2018 — offered the curatorial imaginative and prescient and programmatic concepts.
Underneath Weiss’s steering, the Met balanced its $310 million price range; turned the Breuer constructing on Madison Avenue over to the Frick; and moved ahead on its delayed Fashionable Wing, with the assistance of a $125 million reward from Oscar Tang, a Met trustee, and his spouse, Agnes Hsu-Tang.
“Dan introduced maturity and empathy to the museum and actually stilled troubled waters,” mentioned Hamilton E. James, the Met’s co-chairman. “He acquired us to monetary stability and navigated the place by way of all these bizarre curveballs you wouldn’t ordinarily anticipate.”
Weiss additionally guided the museum’s choice to vary its 50-year admissions coverage, requiring out-of-state guests to pay a compulsory admission price of $25. Weiss has helped steer the museum by way of the pandemic, tough discussions round race and the controversy over Sackler donations.
When Met employees members in 2020 urged the museum’s management to acknowledge a “tradition of systemic racism at our establishment,” the Met subsequently enacted 13 Commitments on Anti-Racism and Diversity, employed its first chief range officer and raised funds to underwrite paid Met internships.
Weiss mentioned he was significantly happy with serving to foster a extra communicative, candid work surroundings. “We’ve created a extra clear, accountable establishment,” he mentioned.
However his departure inevitably raised the query of whether or not he was the loser within the power-sharing association. Having began as president and chief working officer in 2015, Weiss in 2017 added chief government to his title in a placing management reorganization, which meant that the museum’s subsequent director would report back to Weiss, moderately than the opposite means round.
That subsequent director was Hollein, who was lengthy accustomed to being the individual in cost, having served as a museum director since age 31. His résumé included 15 years at a number of establishments in Frankfurt and two years as director and chief government of the Fantastic Arts Museums of San Francisco.
In San Francisco, Hollein managed to take the reins, regardless of the museums’ highly effective board president, Diane B. Wilsey, often known as Dede, who had a status for being loath to relinquish management.
Weiss, too, was used to working the present at Haverford Faculty and, earlier than that, as president at Lafayette Faculty, the place he additionally taught artwork historical past, and as dean of the Krieger College of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins.
As well as, by the point Hollein was employed on the Met, Weiss had had a tantalizing style of being boss, working the museum after Campbell resigned as director beneath strain in 2017.
However each Weiss and Hollein mentioned that, regardless of their admittedly totally different administration kinds and occasional disagreements, that they had loved a constructive working relationship.
“I’ve an actual perception in shared governance,” Weiss mentioned. “Max and I are very totally different individuals, however we work very well collectively as companions. That’s why the museum has been thriving.”
Hollein mentioned in a press release: “Dan has led the Museum by way of unprecedented occasions. He has been a rare associate, whose knowledge and judgment have set an instance for us all.”
Among the many main infrastructure initiatives accomplished throughout Weiss’s tenure are the $150 million alternative of skylights over the European Work Galleries, a reimagining of the British Galleries and the renovation of the Musical Devices Galleries.
As well as, the Met just lately launched the reconstruction of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing (which homes collections of artwork from sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania and the traditional Americas). The museum can be renovating the Historic Close to East and Cypriot galleries.
Weiss has continued to maintain his hand in writing. Subsequent fall, Yale College Press will publish his e book “Why the Museum Matters,” which examines the function of artwork museums in our tradition. In 2019, whereas serving as Met chief, he revealed a biography of a Vietnam Warfare helicopter pilot, and poet who died in the war (it’s quickly due out in paperback).
Among the many challenges going through the Met are the belief of its new Fashionable wing in addition to who will oversee that vital department of the museum: Final month, the Met’s high curator of contemporary and up to date artwork, Sheena Wagstaff, introduced that she would go away this summer time.
The twin partnership on the Met additionally prolonged to the board of administrators in November 2020, when James and Candace Ok. Beinecke have been appointed to exchange Daniel Brodsky, the primary time the board had two leaders.
Requested if the museum would proceed Weiss and Hollein’s shared construction, James mentioned, “We’re about to start out on that — interested by the correct management construction, ought to there be a president and in that case what’s the definition of that function.” He added that the board would seek the advice of Weiss and Hollein about their experiences along with looking for enter from employees members and trustees.
The museum has experimented with administration configurations through the years. Its long-serving director Philippe de Montebello began out in 1977 reporting to the president, William Macomber, and later grew to become coequal with William H. Luers, who grew to become president of the museum in 1986 after a profession within the U.S. Overseas Service. When Luers retired in 1999, the board added chief government to de Montebello’s title, and the museum’s subsequent president, David McKinney, reported to him, as did McKinney’s successor, Emily Ok. Rafferty, in 2005.
Dealing with a projected deficit of $40 million and low employees morale after Campbell’s departure, the Met seemed to Weiss as one thing of a relaxing mother or father who would draw on his background as a succesful supervisor. Along with having led tutorial establishments, Weiss had an M.B.A. from the Yale College of Administration and early in his profession spent 4 years as a administration advisor at Booz Allen Hamilton.
Regardless of his lack of museum expertise, Weiss warmed to the function of arts chief within the wake of Campbell’s departure — assembly with curators about upcoming exhibits, and changing into the general public face of the Met.
When Hollein was employed, Weiss’s function grew to become extra clearly outlined because the less-sexy operations facet. The brand new director assumed the inventive management and rapidly eclipsed Weiss with robust strikes towards a extra inclusive exhibition program, assortment and employees.
Hollein has additionally leaned into the up to date artwork world, constructing on his European connections and classes discovered early in his profession on the knee of Thomas Krens, the previous Guggenheim director who made that New York establishment a world powerhouse by increasing its attain in Bilbao, Spain, whereas stirring the pot by mounting exhibits of Giorgio Armani fits and Harley Davidson bikes. Hollein throughout his profession has curated quite a few influential exhibits of residing artists, like Jeff Koons and Julian Schnabel.
A sublime determine with a Germanic accent, Hollein has additionally change into an everyday presence within the swirl, comfortably clinking glasses with energy gamers at artwork gala’s, biennales and gallery openings.
Weiss, in distinction, has a quieter, faculty professor aura, although by all accounts he has been no much less bold or opinionated.
However Weiss insisted that his choice to depart was unrelated to any tensions or rivalry with Hollein. “We’ve got quite a lot of respect for one another,” Weiss mentioned. “There isn’t any subject between Max and me in any respect.”
